Physics Forums slow loading

  • Thread starter Thread starter davenn
  • Start date Start date
Click For Summary
Users are experiencing significant loading issues with Physics Forums, including slow access times and frequent timeouts, particularly over the past week. The problems are consistent across different devices and browsers, and users have noted difficulties with image uploads as well. While some users have suggested checking ISP connections and using tools like Ping Plotter to diagnose the issue, others report that the forum loads normally at times. The loading issues appear to be isolated to Physics Forums, as other websites are functioning properly. Ongoing discussions suggest a need for further troubleshooting to identify the root cause of the connectivity problems.
davenn
Science Advisor
Gold Member
2024 Award
Messages
9,713
Reaction score
11,661
hi guys

Anyone else having regular hassles - almost constant - with getting the forum to load ?
This has been going on for around a week, maybe a little more, now.
clicking on my https://www.physicsforums.com/ bookmark etc sometimes it might load quickly
sometimes 30 sec to a minute to load, sometimes it just times out trying to get to the site.
Timing out is quite regular
And once I finally get to here, section threads do the same thing, slow to load, won't reload - times out
reloads but won't show any images in the thread

This isn't limited to my Win10 home PC, it's the same with the one at my workplace.
I usually use MS Edge but have tried Chrome and Firefox with no obvious improvement
I have even tried using my VPN with no change.

And I don't know if it is related, but I have been having a lot of hassles uploading images over the last week.
Even when they have been limited to 800x600 and ~ 100kb. often taking forever to upload or timing out and failing to uploadEDIT ... forgot to add, this is not happening with any other www site I visitregards

Dave
 
Physics news on Phys.org
I didn't experience anything like that.
Do your browsers show which step takes so long? Does it look for some file that it can't find?

Do your browsers have trouble caching sites?
 
mfb said:
Do you see which step takes so long?

not sure how to take that ... you referring to pages/site or images ?

when trying to access the forum \browser just comes up saying "cant find site" words to that effect
right at this time, the site and threads are loading as expected, nice and quick

when trying to upload an image and it fails, it sits there for ages and finally comes up with the filename

blahblah.jpg struck through and greyed out
 
hmmm I'm not seeing anything on our end. Anyone else having issues? Might want to call up your ISP?
 
"Gnawthing" here.
 
Greg Bernhardt said:
hmmm I'm not seeing anything on our end. Anyone else having issues? Might want to call up your ISP?

As stated earlier, it happens on home or work computers ( different internet links) also happens if I am on
my VPN and I am ONLY having this problem with the PF site

Tonite, Monday nite, it's still occurring. would site there for up to a minute trying to load a thread

I was going to show you a screen dump that shows that it's waiting for PF to respond ( in the top tab)
but as is common during these go slow times it won't even upload a file

I even did a screen dump whilst I was typing this message and then tried to upload it and it failedDave
 
You can upload the picture elsewhere and link to it.
 
First step is download "Ping Plotter" from:
https://www.pingplotter.com/download

It does a 'Ping' command to every link between you and the site you specify, and then plots the time to everywhere it went. I find it quite informative when things slow down. For instance about a month ago it seemed that PF suddenly went offline. Ping Plotter showed an infinite loop in trying to get there. Apparently one of the ISPs between California and PF had a problem with routing tables; there was a loop around three sites that never got to PF.

Another problem that shows up now and then is that PF references a font file at Google. Sometimes Google does not respond. On this Windows machine I press the F5 key to retry and it comes up. (seems equivalent to 'Hitting it upside the head to get its attention'!)

One more problem I've seen is the default DNS (Domain Name Server) that my ISP uses sometimes comes to a crawl. I finally specified a DNS rather than using the default and that problem stopped.

So LOTS of stuff can go wrong, ...'an go wrong, ...'an go wrong, and it does. Learn the tools to find them and chill, or spend more time with the boob-tube or family. :wink:

Cheers,
Tom
 
  • Like
Likes davenn and Wrichik Basu
Thanks for that @Tom.G G

Running ping-plotter at the moment, the results are not brilliant, large amounts of data loss

I cannot even upload a screendump of pingplotter to show how bad it is :frown:

I can't even upload images to the forum tonite, they just time out, as is common these days
It's still only PF that I am having the issues with, other www sites are as good as gold
 
  • #10
davenn said:
It's still only PF that I am having the issues with, other www sites are as good as gold
Then you can upload the image to a different website and link to it here.
 
  • #12
Lol. . . . 🤔

Greg Bernhardt said:
Anyone else in Australia?
Well, if there isn't and they all came to Montana. . . they made a big mistake.
1581079935284.png
OK, sorry. . . . 🤦‍♂️
Carry on.
.
 
Last edited:
  • #13
mfb said:
Then you can upload the image to a different website and link to it here.

will look at doing that tonite when I get home from work

Greg Bernhardt said:
@davenn are you still in the Sydney region? Anyone else in Australia?

Yes, still in Sydney, Oz :smile:
 
  • #14
forum access is working normal this morning
here is the pingplotter from the other nite that I was unable to post
Thanks @Tom.G

pingplotter2.jpg
 

Similar threads

  • · Replies 24 ·
Replies
24
Views
5K
  • · Replies 4 ·
Replies
4
Views
2K
  • · Replies 8 ·
Replies
8
Views
1K
  • · Replies 5 ·
Replies
5
Views
1K
  • · Replies 1 ·
Replies
1
Views
3K
  • · Replies 6 ·
Replies
6
Views
2K
  • · Replies 22 ·
Replies
22
Views
5K
  • · Replies 176 ·
6
Replies
176
Views
13K
  • · Replies 3 ·
Replies
3
Views
2K
Replies
4
Views
1K